Kids Love Stories

The unit will be a partnership of language arts, social studies and technology. This four-week curriculum is designed for kindergarten students but can certainly be expanded upon for students in grades first through third.To explore how a community’s culture is expressed in part through its stories, students will respond to selected folktales. They will come to terms with values by asking what the characters learned in the story, and relating it to their lives. They will evaluate why it was important to keep retelling the story. They will develop a sense of culture by identifying the country and language of origin, considering what experiences would lead to a story like this. They will also determine whether the story reveals information about the community’s verbal interactional routines, games, celebrations, heroes and attitudes toward old/young people. They will look into what the relationships in the story reveal by asking how problems were solved, who contributed to the solution, and if this strategy can be useful to us. As a result, students will determine whether the time and place of the story give information about local settings and landscapes and reflect on parts of the story that transcend time and place.